Even Better Than The Real Thing
by areyouserial
Summary: Give me one more chance, you'll be satisfied. When Jamie and Eddie crossed that line once, they agreed to leave it a memory they wouldn't dwell on. So what happens when they bring it up again? A one-shot set somewhere in the ambiguous haze of seasons 6-8.


_**A/N:** Thank you to everyone who has reached out to see if all is well over here! I promise TTWHH is in the works. In the mean time, this is not a part of the This Thing We Have Here universe. Just a certain Jamko mood that needed to be put into words. Sort of season 6-7 vibes, but with S8E1 Eddie's shirt. ;) Adult content warning applies. _

* * *

"You don't have to be such a dick, Reagan."

"Oh, here we go."

Eddie hears her partner groan through the phone. She eases back in the leather seat of the cab and looks out the window at the glowing red brake lights that surround her as her taxi inches across town.

"You know what's the biggest scam in the NYPD?" She wonders with an airy note in her otherwise raspy voice brought on by the second glass of wine she had indulged in at the restaurant after her shift. "That you have somehow managed to convince everyone that you're some… virtuous Eagle Scout with a heart of gold who can do no wrong-"

"The _do-no-wrong_ part is accurate," he cuts in. "The rest is unsubstantiated."

"Oh, my god," she mutters. "You can't see how hard I'm rolling my eyes, but trust me-"

"You, more than anyone, should know I gave up on that whole virtue thing a while ago."

"Oh yeah?" She muses. "What made you abandon that?"

"Aren't you on a date tonight?" Already his voice has this baiting smugness about it. That alone sends a little flicker of annoyed heat between her ears that she fights to keep from sinking.

"I was. I'm going home now."

"I take it it didn't go well."

"Why do you say that?"

"It's nine o'clock," he reasons. "I saw you at the house two hours ago."

"I eat fast."

She hears Jamie cough a quiet laugh and it's a sound she misses. But she's quick to furrow her brow and reroute the conversation.

"I'm convinced you sabotaged it."

"Me? You think it concerns me that much?"

Her gaze narrows. "I think when I go out with someone, it does."

"You give yourself too much credit, hotshot."

"I think it's warranted."

"You think I'm jealous?"

A curvy smirk pulls at her cheek. "I'm not calling it jealousy."

"You know, a really cool training Sergeant once told me, _you can't be jealous of what you never had_ , so-"

"Is that right?" She laughs.

"Mm-hm."

She glances down to find her wallet. "Well," she murmurs, "you had me once." Then she pulls out a couple bills to pay the driver as he slows to a stop at her corner.

She doesn't miss the pause Jamie lets hang there as her remark catches him off guard. It's almost as if she can hear the smirk in his silence.

"Thought we didn't talk about that _one time_ ," he reminds her. But the dip in the tone of his voice, the low, rusty murmur sits heavily inside Eddie's chest and she feels that weight begin to slip downward.

She scoots out of the back of the cab and swings the door closed behind her. "I'm just saying. In case you had memory loss in your old age."

"I remember. But, you know, we said how it didn't count for anything."

"Didn't count for anything!" She wails in disbelief as she makes her way into her building. "Wow. Ouch, Reagan."

"We agreed!" He insists. "Don't make it out like those were my words."

"I never said 'didn't count'. I said... I don't know."

"You said, 'let's not make that a memory we need to dwell on'," he recounts.

"Ah." She smiles and begins the ascent up two flights of stairs to her apartment. "Well clearly, I'm not dwelling on it."

"Why'd you call me again?"

"To tell you," she contends, feeling her brows draw together in sincerity as she fumbles with her keychain for the one to her door. "That you didn't have to be such a dick when you happened to run into me meeting up with Greg outside the precinct tonight."

"I wasn't a dick," Jamie says. "I was just headed home. What do you want me to do, join you guys for dinner?"

"No."

"Take Gary to a damn Mets game?"

"Greg!"

"Whatever."

"Oh, don't do that."

"Don't do what?" He questions on the other end of the line. "You called me. I don't know what you want from me. I'm sorry if I hurt Greg's feelings. Next time, I'll ask him about his day. He and I can hug it out," he goes on. "How's that?"

"Ugh," she grumbles. "Shut up."

"I mean, do you want my blessing?" He asks. "My approval? Do you want me to get drunk and fight the guy? What do you want, Eddie?"

"Nevermind, Jamie!" She sighs. Inside the door, she steps out of her shoes and hangs her purse on the hook in the entryway. "Forgive me for thinking you could just… be a friend."

"Is that what you want?"

She pauses with a hot swallow when the question sits with her longer than she expects it to. Her answer is dreadfully unconvincing. "Yes."

"Where are you?"

"I just got home."

She hears him draw a deep inhale through his nose before he tells her, "You think about what it is you really want from me because I'm coming over."

* * *

"Wait, what?" She can hardly get the response out of her mouth before the call ends.

With a confused shake of her head, she slides her phone onto her kitchen countertop and heads to the fridge.

On their lackluster date, Eddie had declared the night over before they got a chance to order an entrée. She just didn't feel that _pull_ , that desire to keep talking to Greg. He was a welcome distraction, a friendly-enough, cute-enough restaurant manager she met at the grocery store.

"Your eggs are expired," he had murmured from behind her shoulder.

Her head eased back in confusion as she turned to acknowledge the man behind her in the check-out line. "Excuse me?"

Then he proceeded to point out the carton of eggs in her hand that had surpassed its expiration date. She laughed, he got her number, and they agreed to meet for a drink. That was the extent of their story.

And okay, maybe it had been intentional - subconsciously intentional - that Eddie arranged for Greg to meet her outside the precinct rather than at the restaurant. Because it never fails to thrill a part of her to see that heat that flashes in Jamie's clear green eyes, the look that he cuts another man who pursues her. The flare of his jaw when he mentally assesses the one who could possibly take his place. The one she would have drinks with, the one she would call from the back of a cab, the one she needed. The one who drove her crazy.

It isn't long before she's opening the door to him and finds Jamie looming over her in the frame of the entryway.

"I've convinced everyone that I'm what now?" He wonders aloud. He pushes himself off the edge and comes closer. Lazy steps, but the purposeful weight of his boots already quicken her pulse.

Eddie makes her way a step back and peers up at him. "Virtuous-"

"Mm." Jamie hums thoughtfully, then his cheek scrunches in apparent disagreement.

She smiles. "Eagle Scout-"

"That's true, I was."

"-With a heart of gold," she continues.

His heel knocks the door closed behind him and the sound of its hard shut startles something in her core.

A curve sneaks across her lips and she gazes up at him from beneath fluttering lashes as she finishes, "-Who can do no wrong. And who also loves hearing about himself."

"You believe all that?" He closes in on her and Eddie feels his hands slip low around her wrists.

"There was a time when I believed that, yes."

He bends her arms at her sides and lifts them. There, he opens his hand and slips his fingers between hers.

She keeps talking because he seems sort of fascinated by the curve of her neck, the tease of a thin strap on her flowy top before the fabric cuts out at her bare shoulders. "And then there was that one time," she murmurs. "That memory we don't dwell on."

His hands close again around hers as he leans his weight against her. "Mm-hm. What about that one time?"

"That was definitely…" A smile threatens Eddie's lips. She feels it twitch there. "You know. Probably the most G-rated sex I've ever had."

He lifts his gaze to her, eyes darkening as if a summer storm begins to rumble there.

She can't help bait him like that. It's too fucking satisfying to watch the angles of his face change with his reactions to her.

"But it figures," she says. "I guess it's not an act."

His eyebrow arches. "The _most G-rated sex you've ever had_?"

"I didn't say it was _bad_. It was just-"

"I thought it was pretty bad," he offers.

A loud gasp blooms in her chest and her eyes widen. "Reagan."

He manages an innocent shrug as the corner of his lips jumps. "What? You can say it but I can't?"

Eddie's grip tightens on his and she swings their arms down. She pushes herself toward him, forcing him to retreat a few steps until his back meets the wall in her hallway.

He lets out a breathy chuckle when he slams there, urging himself closer to her but she holds him back.

"You're such a jerk."

"Thought I was G-rated. Get your story straight," he breathes.

"You called my ass bad in bed?" She mutters in disbelief, her eyes narrowed. As she lets go of his hands, she keeps her body angled into his, placing her palms against the wall above his shoulders so that he's pinned there beneath her.

"Not you." He tilts his head back and Eddie watches his throat clench with a hard swallow as dark lashes lower over his heavy gaze. "Your ass is something I'd never insult, by the way. It's pretty great."

Her lips twist but she isn't going to allow one cute remark to chip away at her control. "So you blame yourself?"

His head tilts as if he's considering the true explanation for why their first time just a couple months earlier had been less than mind-blowing. "I was probably too concerned with trying to be…" Then his face scrunches while he thinks.

"Trying to be what?"

"Nice."

"Don't be nice," Eddie murmurs. The arch in her back dips her forward and she tilts her hip against the front of his jeans.

He lets out a restrained sigh as he gives into the pressure. "Don't go out with that guy again," he tells her.

She lowers a look down the column of his throat before it lifts to meet his eyes. "Why not?"

"Why'd you call me tonight?"

"Why'd you come over?"

The only explanation Jamie can manage is another uneven puff of air that he lets go between his lips. As she tilts into him once more, his hand lands on her hip and swiftly coasts along the back of her jeans. But Eddie's quick to reach down and close her grip around his wrist.

Excruciatingly slow, her hip tilts, then eases away between Jamie's legs.

He tugs out of her closed fist, quick to retaliate, and he grabs her hand off the wall. Urging himself forward, he manages to get her pinned against the opposite wall.

A hot breath leaves her and it's like she feels the pressure of him, the unexpected power he has, all the way inside of her. She aches for it, and at the same time, tenses at the internal conflict of wanting him to own her, and wanting him to surrender.

"You want me to tell you I'm jealous?" The heat of his voice kisses her ear and she's thankful for the wall at her back to keep her legs from giving out.

"Only if it's the truth." Eddie lets him keep a hold around her forearms but soon regrets it when he pushes against her, letting her know what she had started when the firm ridge of his hard-on beneath his jeans presses against her inner thigh. A breathy whimper sneaks out of her as she arches away from the wall, her body contorting for some sort of control.

"It's the truth, Eddie," he assures her.

"Thought you can't be jealous of what you never had-"

His mouth falls on hers and he lets go of her wrists, urgent fingers diving into the strands of her hair.

Eddie's chest deflates at the feeling, her breath escapes her as she gives in to the weight of a kiss that lands just hard enough for her to feel it at the exact center between her legs.

His fist closes around a handful of her hair before her back is thrust against the wall again, his hand keeping the back of her head from banging there.

She chases him for control but seems to fall one step behind him. Pushing against him, he pushes back. She can't compete with his strong hands, so instead, she eases her mouth off of his, leaving him breathless before she crushes her lips to the underside of his jaw. Her teeth lightly scrape there, biting down on the slope of his neck just enough to draw a surprised groan out of him.

She grasps for his t-shirt, stumbling with him away from the wall. They knock into a console table and something hard clatters to the floor but it sounds too distant in Eddie's mind for her to worry about it now.

She yanks his t-shirt up and he works to get it off before he backs her into the table in front of her kitchen. Her rear end nudges the edge, just as Jamie's peeling her top off of her, sending a glass to the floor.

Eddie jumps at the sound of glass shattering. " _Fuck_ , Reagan!"

"Watch where you're going," he mumbles into the side of her neck as he tosses her shirt to the floor where it joins his.

A reluctant chuckle rumbles in her chest as she gazes up at the ceiling. Propping her hands on the table behind her, she attempts to will her body not to react to the feeling of his teeth closing on the sensitive ridge of her collarbone. "I really hate you."

The tip of his nose traces a path there when he rasps against her throat, "Fuck, I want you so bad."

The urgency, the plain honesty of his words sends her stomach into free fall, ignites a blue heat inside her that consumes every nerve. That confession swirls in her head and all she can do, all she wants, is to let him have her.

When the table proves to be too much of an obstacle, they find their way to her bedroom, carelessly leaving behind jeans and shoes and belts and whatever else in their way. In the tangle of sheets on her unmade bed, Eddie sinks beneath his weight as Jamie all but tosses her there and follows on top of her.

Everything about it is rushed and yet she still feels like he's not going fast enough. She swears her impatient need. His hot mouth is wet on her skin, leaving marks that she pays back when she digs fingertips into his shoulderblades.

He fills her in a way that makes her head spin, makes her eyes flutter shut, and he's all she can feel. Her touch slips down to explore the taut muscular plane of his back, then around his sides in an attempt to shift over. But his reflexes are relentless. He grasps her arms once again, never severing his lips from skin, and smacks her wrists to the bed, pinning them just beside the edge of the pillow as he rocks his weight against her.

Her sigh unravels to a breathy yelp as she's thrust against the sheets, her body succumbing to his rhythm.

His grip loosens on her wrists before he spreads his fingers and his palm slides along hers. Their fingers interlock by her head as his steady pace never falters on top of her.

She manages a gasp of air as her head tilts down to watch him, his forehead balanced on her chest. Her focus sharpens as she lifts her hips, meeting him with each intense stroke. She won't be outpaced and the way she rocks against him elicits an impatient moan in his throat that he tries to deny with a rough kiss on her shoulder. He bites down there. He lets go of one hand to push her knee up farther until it's hitched up at his side.

Since they crashed onto this bed, neither one of them had said a word, other than the occasional whispered _fuck_. Their hushed, staccato panting fills the room, it's all she hears. Their mouths are pure desperate heat, seeking the other's out, and hers feels so fucking _used_. That feeling pulses through her entire body, so good. Not _used_ in a way that makes her feel empty, but rather completely undone. There's nothing left for anyone else; she's entirely his.

She bites down on his lip to help her muffle a disappointed cry when he slows the hard roll of his hips and eventually eases his length out of her.

Breathlessly, she complains. "Oh, my god no-" But then his fingers are there, one dipping inside of her before he draws an expert path and nearly shatters her into pieces with a focused, tightly-circled stroke.

She can barely make a sound beyond tipping her head back into the pillow, her mouth slack. Disbelief squeaks from her throat that he seriously interrupted such a determined fuck to tease her to the brink like this. She's about to beg for him inside her when a tremor begins to quake at her inner thighs. She sucks in a gasp of air and she can't move.

And just as beginning waves of her orgasm wind through her, he shoves her knee out and sinks inside her again, so hard the headboard of her bed knocks the wall. She tugs him down and rides another crashing wave.

Heated cries scorch each other's skin, buried there like a secret. And touches like frantic confessions leave marks in their wake as they gradually find one another amid the aftermath of everything they could never say.


End file.
